Saturday, April 29, 2006

Our fifth reading was April 26th, 2006 at the Sacred Fools Theatre in Hollywood. The reading was following by a lively Q&A session, which allowed writer Sarah Vaill to hear immediate audience feedback to help in future drafts of the script.

Thanks to those who came to see it and participated in the Q&A, and to the actors!

Friday, April 21, 2006

Mexico 1910: When Pancho Villa raids the Hacienda Palomas, teenage Adela escapes the fields to join his revolution. Swept into the chaos of war and passion, she finds the courage to lead and takes on a battle of wills with Villa himself.

This Wednesday, April 26th, 2006, at 7:30 p.m.___________________________________________________

The victories and defeats in the Mexican Revolution were sung into folksongs by Pancho Villa's fighting men. Nearly 100 years later, the song La Adelita remains one of Mexico's most popular today. Remembered proudly, all the women of the Revolution's ranks have come to be known by one endearment—the ADELITAS.

“ADELITAS is an action-packed tale about loyalty, love, and learning which one is worth fighting for.” --ScriptAlley.com ___________________________________________________

A graduate of the UCLA Professional Program in Screenwriting, Sarah Vaill is also a bilingual documentary director, a member of NALIP, and…secretly a Doublemint twin. She writes for V-Day, launched by Eve Ensler's The Vagina Monologues, and has had a set of nine monologues commissioned for performance by WFN. Sarah's genre is female adventure stories, and ADELITAS is her 4th completed script.

Tuesday, April 11, 2006

After a series of disappointments in his Minnesota hometown, a young man flees to a Caribbean island. Through the love of a peg-legged woman and the spirit guidance of an indifferent Indian chief, he returns to make Minnehaha a place worth calling home. ___________________________________________________

“Minnehaha is a unique comedy with a squishy, heart-felt center. Kind of like a Twinkie but without the nausea or guilt. But you didn’t hear that from me.”

Anonymous White House source (not Karl Rove)

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Minnehaha is a story about how one man finds his home where it always was and fights to keep it the same. Which sounds pretty boring. Until you think about it. In today’s bi-coastal culture, we can live anywhere and at times can feel downright disconnected from our roots. At the same time global corporations are hell-bent on putting the same restaurants and stores in every town so that every place is really the same, anyway. This is our world. This is Swanny's world.

Swanny doesn’t have it easy, either. The day he is born, his father takes one look at him and jettisons the delivery room. His mother is a whacked-out artist. He tries to start his own family as soon as he can, but only freaks out his girlfriend. He tries to start a company, but that fails miserably, too. So he takes off to a beautiful island where he falls in love with a peg-legged woman and her 10-year old son, and helps them get tourists back. At last, a real home. Until a dead Indian chief appears to him in a vision and tells him he’s needed back in Minnehaha. Of course he goes. Wouldn't you?

After a heart-wrenching departure, he returns, this time to a battle with his little brother over a development deal that will erase all that's unique in Minnehaha. But Swanny, ever resourceful, has a solution: build a giant loon in the town center to attract tourists and keep their town quaint. The question is: can he pull off such a cockamamie scheme? ___________________________________________________

The Sacred Fools Theater www.sacredfools.org660 N. Heliotrope (just south of Melrose), Hollywood 90004Parking in lot next to the building ____________________________________________________

About Drew Falkman:

A graduate of UCLA's Professional Screenwriting Program and an alum of UW-Madison's journalism school, writing has always been a part of Drew's life. Drew has published two books through major publishers and contributed to numerous publications over the years - online and off. Minnehaha is Drew's 4th completed screenplay.